


King's Man

by esama



Series: King's Man [2]
Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Arthur!Eggsy, Gen, Harry Hart Lives, V-Day Aftermath
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-01
Updated: 2015-06-03
Packaged: 2018-04-02 09:31:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4055047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esama/pseuds/esama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry wakes up in a changed world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Proofread by Darlene

"…time of her arrival? Very good. Keep me informed on her progress," a voice speaks calmly through the black red haze over Harry's mind. "Now, moving onto Gawain – yes, thank you, Merlin. What's the situation with the aerial view – do we have that satellite yet? Yes, of course."

Harry struggled against the fog, against the gravity trying to pull him back under and into the black nothingness. He knew that voice – he could almost name it. It meant something.

"Do as you feel necessary. Can you patch me through to him? Thank you," the voice said after a moment. "Gawain, give me the sit-rep. How does it look? Yes, yes… are you sure? Merlin, can you confirm the read? Well then. At least we know now we can trust their intel. Merlin, opinions; is it worth it to try and retrieve it?"

Following the voice – clinging onto it desperately and using it as a life line to crawl his way back up and to the surface – Harry managed to shake the fog. With its retreat came sensation and more noise than he'd registered before – the steady beat of a heart monitor, the creak of what sounded like leather, a breath of air on his face – wind, an open window approximately a meter and half to the left of him. No sound of traffic, distant sound of rustling leaves. Not a bunker then, and not London. The room was sizeable and at least partially furnished – there were no echoes, neither from the man's voice nor from the heart monitor. Not a hospital.

"Alright. You heard Merlin, Gawain; get to it," the voice said and there were sounds of slight movement, a shift of cloth, a creak of leather, and the tap of a finger against something solid. Tablet computer perhaps. "Yes, Merlin, I'm looking at it right now. I'm going to take a moment to read this through – yes, good. Carry on."

Harry opened his eyes, instantly seeking out the source of the voice. There was a young man sitting on a leather armchair not far from him, an IV stand and a tea table between them. He looked familiar and strange all at once, in his bespoke suit and black framed glasses, hair slicked into a neat arrangement, face calm and collected as he flicked a finger gently over the surface of a tablet, eyes flicking back and forth as he read. He had one leg casually crossed over the other and on his finger he had a signet ring.

Harry opened his mouth to try and say something, but in that moment there was a quiet buzzing sound, and without looking up from the tablet, the man in the armchair took out a mobile phone, glanced at the screen, and then answered the call.

"Arthur," Eggsy said, calm and confident and looked up. His eyes landed on Harry and widened ever so slightly. "Mr. Wellsby, how good to hear from you again," he said into the phone, his voice still even. "I trust everything is quite alright? Quite well, sir, thank you. And you? I trust the family is doing well?"

Harry stared silently, as Eggsy exchanged a few pleasantries with Mr. Wellsby, whoever that was. Eggsy's eyes were still wide as they flicked down, to Harry's side – and looking down Harry could see the call button. It was set right next to his hand, within easy reach. He didn't press it.

"We are, as always, at your disposal, Mr. Wellsby," Eggsy said, a slight frown marring his face now. "What seems to be the problem? Mm, yes… Yes, right… Alright. We'll look into it, Mr. Wellsby, it will be our top priority. Yes, of course. Thank you very much, Mr. Wellsby. We'll be in touch. Good day."

The moment he could hang up, Eggsy was up from the armchair, tablet and phone both abandoned on the tea table. Harry blinked and Eggsy was already at his side, checking his face, his eyes – pressing the call button Harry hadn't. "Harry?" he asked. "Do you know me?"

"Arthur?" Harry asked and Eggsy's eyes widened and then narrowed suspiciously. Harry let out a huff, shaking his head a bit. "Why are you answering your phone by _Arthur,_ Eggsy?"

That made Eggsy relax a bit, made his eyes brighten. "A lot's been going on, Harry," he said with a tight little grin that was there and gone again as quick as it had appeared. "What do you remember?"

Harry closed his eyes. "Kentucky," he muttered and coughed. His throat was dry and tight.

"Oh, thank fuck. It's been a while since then, though," Eggsy said, his voice loosening as he quickly reached for the tea table and grabbed his own tea cup, bringing it Harry. "Bit over six months, actually. We've been worried about you – you got shot in the head, you know."

"I'm well aware," Harry answered roughly and drank the tea carefully. It was almost cold and there was touch too much sugar in it, but it was enough to moisturise his parched tongue and throat, and his voice came a little more even as he asked, "Valentine?"

"Dead, long dead," Eggsy answered and looked up as there was a knock on the door. "Left us one hell of a mess to clean up too. Come!" he said.

It was Merlin, of course – who was quickly at Harry's side, aiming a pen light in his eyes and running him through the usual post head injury and long coma check-up. Did Harry know his name, did he know the country, did he remember various dates or people, and so on.

"You're one lucky son of a bitch," Merlin said. "Cracked your skull twice – first when you got shot and then when you hit the pavement. It was touch and go for a while, from what we know. Swelling, bleeding – they had to do three surgeries to relieve the pressure. You've got a couple of plates on your skull now, but at least you didn't actually get a bullet in your head – it hit at a bad angle and didn't fully penetrate."

"Thank fuck Valentine was a shitty shot," Eggsy agreed.

"That and I ducked," Harry answered, rubbing a hand over his forehead where he had a whole new scar to contend with. Valentine's aim had been just slightly off, and there'd been a split of a second opening to take advantage of it – avoiding getting hit completely at that distance was impossible, but he'd done what he could to try to survive with only a surface injury. "Why didn't they shoot me when I was out?"

"Valentine was haemophobic – didn't check the body, couldn't stomach it" Eggsy said with grim satisfaction and glanced up as his phone began to ring again on the tea table, buzzing hard against the wooden surface. With some reluctance he glanced at it and then picked it up with a sigh. Then his whole demeanour changed.  "Pardon me gentleman, I need to take this," he said, and walked out of the room to answer. "Arthur," he answered the phone, just as the door closed after him.

"Busy boy," Harry commented, glancing at Merlin. There was a hardness to Eggsy that hadn't been there before – which might've been explained by the six months that had passed… but the hardness was in Merlin too. Something was very different – and very wrong.  "Why is Eggsy answering his phone as _Arthur_?"

Merlin let out a snort. "Well," he said. "The world went to shit and we ended up with… limited man power."

"That's not an answer."

"No, it isn't," Merlin agreed, glancing away and then walking to the side to get a chair, dragging it from under the window and to Harry's bedside. "The SouthGladeMissionChurch was a test – Valentine testing the effectiveness of the neurological wave of his. And Valentine had been planning it for a while – preparing for it. By the time the test took place, he had everything already set for a global activation."

"You're shitting me," Harry murmured.

"I'm afraid not. Of course it wasn't the first test – those incidents Lancelot had been investigating all related to Valentine's signal. The tests and preparations have been going on for years, with no one the wiser. And it gets better," Merlin said, and took off his own glasses, handing them over to Harry who pulled them on with slightly shaking hands.

With his ever present pad, Merlin activated a nearby portrait as a screen and with somewhat bleary eyes Harry watched as lists of names and faces and facts scrolled down the screen.

"Valentine was a supporter of Professor Arnold's Gaia theory – and he figured that Earth was in need of a population culling before the planet itself would wipe us out with global warming and whatnot," Merlin said. "He'd been working at it for a while. The mysterious disappearances and kidnappings that happened at that time? Valentine's doing. He approached pretty much every influential person on the planet – political entities, business moguls, celebrities… royalty. He pitched his plan at them and if they agreed to it, they were chipped with the same implant Professor Arnold had. And if they didn't…"

The view on the portrait changed, into an image of a long corridor, the architecture of which had a decisive _bunker_ feel to it. There were heavy metal doors on both sides of the corridor, with key pads – and the floor was stained with blood. As Merlin activated the video, letting it play out, Harry saw Eggsy opening doors, letting people out, talking and shaking hands with them before pointing them where to go. They all looked various levels of shocked and pale.

There were a lot of faces Harry could recognize – not just from the missing person's reports that had been all over the news, but even from before. There were politicians, a young man who looked like he might be the Prince of Wales – and the blonde woman who lingered at Eggsy's side was definitely Princess Tilde of Sweden.

"Valentine's secret base housed almost five hundred hostages," Merlin said. "We didn't know it then, but Valentine used them to get at their family members – so long as their families cooperated with Valentine, the hostages wouldn't be hurt. We think that's how he got so many world leaders implanted."

There was a grimness to the way Merlin said it and Harry glanced at him. "What happened, Merlin?" he asked. "In order, please."

So Merlin told him. Told him about Arthur – whom Eggsy had killed with his own poison pretty much the moment he'd seen the implant scar. Told him about taking out one of Valentine's satellites, which hadn't been enough. Told him about Eggsy, who raided Valentine's base pretty much all by himself.

"All in all it went pretty well, up until the moment Valentine got another satellite and about two hundred more troops," Merlin said, looking at the pad and not at Harry. "We were fucked. So at Eggsy's suggestion I triggered the implants. It was the only thing we could do to try and stop it. We didn't know back then just how many of them there were, how many people had been implanted."

Harry looked at the portrait, at the list of names – the long, long list of world leaders. " _Shit_ ," he muttered.

"And then Valentine activated the SIM cards – and, well," Merlin shook his head. "It all went to hell. We managed to stop it – Eggsy killed him, stopped the signal. But it took a few minutes. The signals effectiveness was… the losses were devastating."

Harry swallowed as the videos from all over the world began playing. Most of them were security camera footage from streets or public places – which gave a more than clear image how effective the thing had been. Not that Harry needed to see it to believe it. He'd felt it. "How long did…?"

"The signal was activated all told four minutes and twenty seconds, give or take," Merlin said and changed the image – to that of a black and blue world map, quickly bleeding into red. "It took about twelve seconds to fully take effect on the victims. Every city with more than a hundred thousand people was activated within twenty seconds, which left about four minutes of utter bloody madness. At fifty seconds, it had near global coverage – there were some sparsely populated places where it wasn't so effective but Valentine was very efficient in spreading those free SIM cards of his around."

Harry stared at the map and then closed his eyes – and then quickly opened them again. It was too vivid, in his head, behind his eyelids. That scene in the church, all those people dying. Him, killing all those people. Wanting to kill them – and taking no joy or satisfaction in it, just wanting to kill, kill, kill… "How long was the signal active at the church?" he asked quietly.

"Three and a half minutes," Merlin answered. "From the start of the signal to when you… when it was over."

In three and a half minutes over two hundred people were dead at that church. The world had been under for longer than that.

The door opened and Eggsy re-entered. Merlin and Harry both glanced up. "Sorry about that," Eggsy said and looked between them before glancing at the portrait. His face hardened for a moment and then he shook his head. "Where we at, Merlin?"

"Just about to get to the aftermath," Merlin answered and turned to Harry. "When we got back to Kingsman HQ, we found most of the staff dead – and every senior Kingsman agent either missing or dead."

"They couldn't have all had the implants," Harry said, stunned.

"They didn't. Some of them probably did – the ones we couldn't find. Gawain, Lamorak, Kay, Bors… we still haven't been able to find them," Eggsy said, folding his arms as Merlin brought up the bios of the Kingsman agents on the portrait. "They're probably all headless in some bunkers somewhere, rotting away. The rest were either assassinated, or they fell under the signal effect."

"Kingsman HQ was littered with Vphones," Merlin said darkly. "Turns out Arthur had given a lot of bonuses to Kingsman staff members in the previous days – Vphones for personal usage being included in the bonus packages."

"Jesus fuck," Harry said, his hands tight on the bed covers.

Eggsy shrugged. "He needed to take the Kingsman out – those who he couldn't turn to Valentine's cause anyway," and glanced at Harry. "Too big of a risk, keeping them around in a post V-day world."

"In the end we were left with one agent, less than fifty staff members and a world gone to hell," Merlin said. "We had to improvise."

"Everybody had to improvise," Eggsy agreed and sat down on the leather armchair with a sigh. "People died in the hundreds of millions. Over forty countries had headless leaders and a lot of their governments had been killed in the massacres. Add to that, that pretty much all armed forces all over the world had just shot their mates. You'll have a tough time trying to find someone who didn't lose somebody that day – or who didn't _kill_ somebody."

"Fine fucking mess," Merlin agreed.

The communications icon started flashing in Merlin's glasses and Harry took them off, handing them back just as Eggsy touched his glasses. "I'm listening," he said to whoever had contacted him and Merlin donned on his own glasses, tapping something on his touch pad and listening. Eggsy glanced at him and then nodded at the door – Merlin stood up, giving Harry an apologetic smile as he strode out of the room.

"Gawain's investigating the base of a scientist who got his hands on some of Valentine's tech," Eggsy explained to Harry. "You have no idea how many people are trying to reverse engineer the stuff – and how many people have gotten too damn close to replicating the tech."

"Gawain?" Harry asked, frowning. "You've already had time to recruit and name candidates?"

"We're still under staffed – Merlin's training more people as fast as we can find them. We only have four active agents right now – Lancelot, Gawain, Percival and Tristan. All of them are from the Lancelot candidate trials," Eggsy shrugged. "I work in the field as much as I can, but most of time I'm too busy _managing_ things."

"And how precisely did you end up as Arthur?" Harry asked, eying him half in suspicion. "Why didn't Merlin –"

"We need Merlin to be Merlin more than we needed him to be an Arthur," Eggsy said, shaking his head. "And Lancelot didn't want to do it. Plus, I made some connections at Valentine's base – a lot of those people ended up being _crowned_ or elected in the following months and the rest were more than instrumental in keeping the world intact. Princess Tilde is Her Majesty Queen Tilde now, and we've got a nice handsome young King here in the UK. I have tea with him every Saturday."

Harry stared at him and then ran a hand over his face, trying to catch up. "Shit," he muttered then and looked at Eggsy again, taking him in. Now that he was _really_ looking at him, the change was obvious. Though he still slipped into his original loose accent every now and then, he more often snapped into more even, sharper tones – and most of the slang was gone from his speech. More than that, though, was how comfortable he was in his skin – in his suit, in his hair cut, in his posture.

Eggsy looked somewhat older now. Tired and overworked.

"Six months," Harry said. "I'm gone for six months and everything goes to shit."

"It's been fucking wild half a year, lemme tell you," Eggsy agreed with a little grin and then eyed him levelly. "When we found you, we had you down for Arthur, you know. I was so fucking relieved but… you didn't wake up. And we couldn't wait. You really need to stop doing this, Harry. These long convalescences just won't do."

"I'll try my best to avoid them in the future," Harry said, swallowing. Him for Arthur. Jesus. He wasn't sure which was worse – that it had been a possibility or the fact that it _wasn't_ anymore. Because Eggsy had been Arthur for months now, he'd settled into the position – he'd build up _connections_.

"Well," Eggsy said, picking up his phone and tablet and standing up. "I'll call in the doctor, see about getting you checked up and back to a hundred percent," he said, tapping a few keys on the tablet and then handing it over to Harry. "So you can catch up with things. Everything you might want to learn about should be in here," he said as Harry accepted it. "Anything you need?"

"No, thank you," Harry said, looking at the tablet and then up at Eggsy. "Eggsy, you…" he started and then stopped. "Thank you."

"Get well, Harry," Eggsy said with a smile and turned to leave, his shoulders a little stiff – and as the door closed after him, Harry realised that not once had either Eggsy or Merlin called him _Galahad_.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do Kingsman now, apparently :| and am very imaginative with my titles.
> 
> I'm still trying to find my feet in this fandom though, so... can't guarantee quality. New characters always take a bit getting adjusted to.
> 
> Also Eggsy/Harry is a possibility but I'm not yet sure if this fic will even make it far enough for that to be an issue.


	2. Chapter 2

V-day. Once it had stood for Victory Day, marking the day when great wars ended. Once it was a good day, once it was something to celebrate. Now…

After he was finished with the Kingsman reports and summaries and what Merlin directed to his tablet to bring him up to speed, Harry set it all aside and instead indulged in reading some message boards, forums and blog posts; reading people's experiences. There were already numerous websites set around V-day, whole new branches created for existing social medias, intended solely for putting together the whole picture, making sense of the incident.

On those sites, people shared their horror stories. On those sites, people confessed their sins. The experiences varied from horrible to traumatic to emotionally crippling. People wrote them down in gruesome, horrible detail – trying to find some sort of release in getting it all out there, putting it on display for all the world to see.

_This is what happened, this what I did, this is how I did it, this is who I did it to – I couldn't stop myself, I couldn't control myself, please, please forgive me._

A wife, writing about stabbing her husband eighty times in the chest. A son who beat both his elderly parents with a baseball bat. A former police officer, who shot every prisoner that was held in her lock up. A doctor, who'd slit the throat of a patient in mid surgery before doing his best to stab his assistants. A weightlifter who'd beaten a stranger to death on the street. An office worker who'd intentionally driven into a crowd, turned around, and done it again and again and again. A construction worker who'd used a sledge hammer on his co-workers… Hundreds upon hundreds of parents, crying out in agony with their children's blood all over their hands.

Not _everybody_ had killed, but the deaths had been numerous, overwhelmingly so. There are statistics – the number of deaths that occurred during the V-day incident was estimated at eight hundred ninety million – including those who'd died later due to the injuries they got during the incident. And there were a lot of injuries – in the billions. Almost no one survived unscathed. There were stabbings, internal injuries, broken bones by the millions, there were burns and concussions and so on and so on…

 And in the days following V-day, the number of suicides had taken a nearly two thousand percent increase all over the world. Parents mostly – former parents.

Harry read the confessions with a sort of hollow single mindedness, one after another, and tried to come to terms with it. Not just the fact that this was the world they lived in now, but that there were millions, _billions_ of people, who he shared one singular horrible experience with. Somewhere in his head the events at that hateful church were still playing out – shot after shot, stab after stab, death after death after death. He remembered it so well, so damn well, every moment, every move as pristine and bloody in his head as if it happened just yesterday.

Worse yet, he remembered _wanting it_. Wanting to kill everyone there.

Universally no one was blamed for what they'd done on V-day – everyone knew what had caused it, everyone knew what the true cause was. Even if the Kingsman – Merlin – hadn't released a lot of the info out into the public domain, the cause was obvious to anyone with two brain cells to rub together.

The fact that no one who'd fallen victim to the signal was _blamed_ didn't really seem to make it any better though – not for those who'd committed the acts, and definitely not for those who'd lost something precious because of it. So people confessed, tried to make sense of it, tried to make _amends_ for it… tried to find peace.

How the hell the world hadn't collapsed in on itself after V-day Harry had no fucking idea. Of course in a lot of the places things had just collapsed – rioting, looting, uprisings were all the rage these days in some countries. There were at least eight civil wars taking place, possibly more. Even the so-called superpowers had taken massive blows, not just to their population or leadership but just their general state and community – to their _infrastructure_.

In a modern world it only took a day's worth of stall in the transport of goods before food started running out, after all. And with governments all crashed down or as near as, it took longer than a day to get things back into order, to work up any sort of organisation. After V-day, there were _famines_. Even now there wasn't a country in the world that wasn't in desperate, desperate need of aid – and there was no one who could give it.

The deaths due to starvation, bad medical care, and whatnot that happened during the first month after V-day weren't technically included in the V-day deaths. But they, along with the deaths related to uprisings, rioting, sudden resurgence of crime, various conflicts and a brief, brutal war that had broken out in Asia, and of course the staggering number of suicides… together they dropped the world population to under six billion. As of now, six months later, the world population was estimated to be at five point six billion. And it was still going down.

For the first time in possibly _ever_ , the world population was declining.

"Hell of a thing to try and wrap your head around, isn't it?" Merlin asked, as he came in to confirm the doctor's report on Harry's health and his future physiotherapy.

Harry rubbed a hand over his aching forehead, lowering the tablet with its endless barrage of grim statistics. It didn't feel real – none of it did. For more than one deranged moment he'd wished he could just deny it all away – that it was all some fever dream he had as he lay on that street in front that fucking church in Kentucky, his brains frying away on the asphalt.

"I suppose I should count myself lucky to have missed the worst of it," Harry muttered. "How the fuck did this happen, Merlin?"

Merlin just shook his head, handing Harry a pair of glasses – one of his own pair, perfectly fitted and snug as he slipped them on. "Give a brilliant man a horrible idea to save the world and the means to do it," he said and sighed, sitting down. "Give him that one percent of the world that controls the remaining ninety nine percent. Fuck, Harry. I don't even know."

Harry looked at him, taking in the dark circles under his eyes, the new wrinkles that hadn't been there. "How quick do you need me on the field?"

Merlin snorted. "That, my friend, will be up to your psychiatrist," he said and then smiled at the affronted look Harry gave him. "Sorry, Harry, but we've got too many examples of what V-day did to people. We can't take the chance of putting you in the field and then…" he trailed off meaningfully.

Harry thought grimly about one of the blog posts – a horrified mother, writing about her son. The boy had killed his father and two younger sisters during V-day. Afterwards it had seemed like the boy might recover, might be okay – and then, a month later, he'd taken his father's pistol, the same he'd used to shoot most of his family, and he'd shot up a tube station, taking out eight people before shooting himself.

And it wasn't exactly a unique incident.

"You need me," Harry said.

"Not badly enough to risk it, I'm afraid," Merlin said. "No, Harry. You're grounded until the shrinks clear you."

Whether Merlin thought he might go trigger happy or suicidal was hard to say. In either case, Merlin did have a point and Harry wasn't so proud as to try and insist he came unscathed from it. Far from it.

There were times when he'd hear something that sounded like that damn buzzing tone that had come from those phones, that had painted everything in front of him so utterly _hateful_ and… He wasn't so badly off that the flashbacks took him out. His hands were steady, he didn't vomit, he didn't even hyperventilate. But he did freeze, and once he actually considered throwing himself out of the window, just in case. Sometimes he'd notice his own hands in his peripheral vision and there'd be a moment of vertigo where he was seriously doubting how good his own control over them was – whether or not it was really _him_ moving them.

There hadn't been a single nightmare free night since Harry had woken from the coma and the nightmare was always the same.

"Alright," Harry said quietly. "You know best, Merlin."

The head of the Kingsman Tech division eyed him seriously for a moment. "For what it's worth, Gawain and Tristan were both in the same boat as you," he said. "Doubt you're too interested to see what they did – it's no prettier watching than what happened at that church. But they're handling it, and I can't see any reason why you couldn't do the same."

So, along with his physiotherapy that largely consisted of trying to regain muscle mass, Harry had psychiatrist appointments. They happened at the estate – the psychiatrist was a Kingsman staff member, a new one that Harry didn't know. Dr. Lake was a woman in her late thirties, and obviously as overworked as every other official Kingsman member Harry had seen so far.

Harry couldn't say he much enjoyed the experience of being psychoanalysed. Not that it hadn't happened before. There had been other incidents along his career that had required specialised after-care, and of course psychoanalysis was part of the Kingsman membership trials. It never stopped being the worst sort of invasion, however necessary it was. This was different from the previous experiences though. This wasn't a botched up mission he needed to work his way through, wasn't a simple mistake he needed to make peace with.

He'd killed a church full of people, being both in and out of control all at once.

"The truly insidious feature of the V-day signal was that the impulses it triggered all came from within," Dr. Lake told him. "Logically you know that you weren't in control, logically you know it wasn't your fault. But logic doesn't feature when you remember doing it _yourself_."

Harry shifted in his seat, smothering the urge to fiddle with the sleeve of his morning jacket – he'd not yet been given access to his suits, his gear. Not before he was cleared. "I'm quite aware of what I did," he said, grim.

"I've no doubt," Dr. Lake said, watching him closely. "Tell me, Mr. Hart – how much of that do you think was _you_ and how much of it was the signal?"

Harry had a feeling it was going to take more than just a couple of sessions with Dr. Lake to get him anywhere near cleared for duty. Which was probably just as well, he thought with some resignation as he headed back to his room after the emotionally gruelling session. No matter how good the care he'd been under during his coma was, he'd lost some mobility and quite a bit of strength, never mind the loss of flexibility. The physical therapy was going to take weeks.

He was in the middle of getting ready to head down to the gym to get started on that day's set of physical exercises, when the door was opened and Eggsy walked in. Harry looked up, arching his eyebrow as Eggsy, head in a tablet and frown on his face, walked to the armchair and sat down without as much as a by-your-leave. He didn't even acknowledge Harry's presence.

"Still haven't learned to knock," Harry commented after a strange silence.

Eggsy looked up, blinked and then glanced around. He looked almost comically confused for a moment before his face fell. "Shit," he said and stood up again. "Sorry, I was distracted. Didn't mean to butt in like this."

"What are you doing here, Eggsy?" Harry asked, frowning – wondering if he should start making the transition to calling Eggsy Arthur. He still wasn't sure about that at all – but… from what he'd seen, Eggsy's reign as Arthur hadn't done Kingsman any more damage than Valentine and the previous Arthur had done. The Kingsman that existed currently was somewhat different from how Harry knew it, though. He hadn't quite nailed down all the changes – but he knew for a fact that Kingsman had lot more ties to outside organisations than it previously had had.

He hadn't seen much of his former protégé in the last few days – Eggsy had been in London, dealing with something Harry didn't have the clearance to know about yet. Harry hadn't even heard he was back.

"I came to –" Eggsy started and stopped, running a hand over his face – and with a start Harry realised he looked exhausted, pretty much dead on his feet. Eggsy shook his head. "I'm used to coming here to work through reports and stuff," he said. "Kind of came here on autopilot."

"When was the last time you slept, Eggsy?" Harry asked and apparently, it wasn't the time for that transition just yet.

"I caught a wink or two yesterday," Eggsy said, waving a dismissive hand. "Merlin's taking over for me today, so I'll get a full night's sleep, 'less something blows up or some shit," he added and then looked at Harry. "You look better," he said.

"Couple of hearty meals and a shave did me wonders," Harry answered, still watching him. "You on other hand look terrible. You should go and rest, Eggsy."

"Can't. Too much work to do, too much to catch up on," Eggsy said, glancing at the armchair and then sighing. "I'll go to my office, I guess," he said. "Get out of your hair."

Harry sighed. "No, Eggsy, it's fine. Do sit down," he said. "Actually there are some things I'd like to ask you, if you have the time."

Eggsy sat back down with a grunt. He glanced at his watch. "I can give you five minutes, Harry. Then I really need to get to work. And you know that until Dr. Lake clears you, there are things I can't tell you."

"Understood," Harry nodded, smothering a weird half grin at the strangeness of it all. Eggsy Unwin, in charge. It was very bizarre and yet he'd seen an inkling of that during Eggsy's training while he'd been a candidate for Lancelot. Seeing the promise of it realised was… gratifying.

He just hadn't expected Eggsy to truly catch his stride so soon, and definitely not like this.

"Can I ask you about the events leading to V-day?" Harry asked. "Merlin has given me the reports and I have the bare bones of the events, but there are gaps."

Eggsy made a winding motion with his hand. "It's classified, but you're entitled to it," he said. "What do you want to know?"

"Arthur – the previous Arthur. Chester King," Harry said, watching Eggsy closely. "Can you tell me what happened?"

Eggsy took a breath and then released it slowly. "Right. Okay. First of all – I don't know if you did it intentionally or not, but you left your laptop unlocked," he said. "After you left, I poked around, found it, and… well. You were streaming your footage live. I watched."

Harry said nothing. He'd known Eggsy would've seen it – at least some part of it. Merlin had given him a _talking to_ after the incident with Professor Arnold, and so Harry had kept the stream open, didn't encrypt it like he usually did. Merlin's voice had been in his ear the whole time during the incident at the church, so he had the footage at least. And as the new Arthur, Eggsy would've had to see at least some of the footage at some point.

He just hadn't realised Eggsy had been watching him _while_ he completely lost control.

"After the footage cut out, I headed to the shop, to… I don't know. I just wanted to do something. I wanted to make sure someone knew about it, about you, the SIM cards. I didn't know Merlin already knew," Eggsy shrugged, looking away. "Anyway. The old Arthur was there – they'd just drank a toast to you, the agents. The old Arthur told me that there was nothing to worry about – that the info had been given to the right people, that it was all dealt with. That it was a good legacy for you or some shit."

Harry frowned. It sounded like Chester. "Did you buy it?" he asked.

"For a moment, yeah. Never could get a read on the old man," Eggsy admitted. "Anyway, he told me to have a seat, told me about the brandy, offered me a drink. And I saw it," he said, tilting his head to the side and running a fingertip along the skin behind his right ear. "We're damn lucky you let me stay, watching that footage on Arnold before. Never would've known what it was, if you hadn't."

"Lucky," Harry muttered. "And then?"

"Long story short, he offered me a drink. Sly old bastard knew I was coming, had the glass already poisoned," Eggsy said. "I didn't know for sure, but after I saw the scar I wasn't about to take any chances. So I switched the drinks around, just in case. And then when he thought I'd drunk the stuff, he told me about Valentine, how he'd won him over, how it all made sense… the Gaia theory, about humanity being a virus that the planet was trying to get rid of with climate change, all that shit."

Harry closed his eyes for a moment. The _old_ Arthur had been a snob, had always looked down on people of lesser birth – people who weren't _like them_. Harry had never really seen eye to eye with him. But he'd respected the man. Trusted him.

"He told me I had a place in it, if I wanted it," Eggsy added. "Doubt I really did, kinda doubt the old bastard liked me enough to actually keep me around like that, but anyway. He told me to do it in _your honour_." Eggsy let out a tired laugh. "It was almost funny, now that I think about it. I wonder if he seriously thought that could work, after what happened."

"So you said no," Harry said thoughtfully.

Eggsy shrugged, looking away. "He activated the poison and died," he said. "And I used that pen he killed himself with to dig the implant out of his neck. And later Merlin used it to blow up the heads of… a lot of very important people just before the world went mental. It was a fun day."

Harry nodded thoughtfully, watching him. "Did you hesitate at all, when you killed Chester King?" he asked.

"Not a bit, bruv," Eggsy said, utterly shameless. "S'far as I knew, Valentine just killed you, and the old man was in Valentine's pocket. Wasn't in a precisely forgivin' mood. Besides, I knew somethin' was up. Knew I had to do somethin'. Figured Merlin could use that implant. So."

Harry smiled faintly at that. "Well done, Eggsy," he said, and meant it.

"Yeah," the younger man agreed with a grin. "So, why'd you want to know about that anyway? Bit old news."

Harry let out a wry chuckle. "You can't deny it makes something of a suspicious tale, to hear that the new Arthur killed the old one," he said. "If I didn't know better I'd think you'd executed a coup d'etat."

Eggsy let out a snort. "Kill the old king, take his place?" he asked and shook his head. "Glad to know I'm not the only one who finds that funny. But you know Merlin probably would've shot me by now, if it was something like that."

"Yes. Never mind the fact that the chances of you not only planning but succeeding at something of that nature is highly unlikely," Harry agreed. "Still. It was well done. I rather wish I had a recording of it."

"You and me both," Eggsy agreed and frowned. "If I had footage of his scar from before I opened it up we might be able to figure out how old it was. We have no idea how long he was working for Valentine," he said grimly. "No idea how many of operations might've been compromised. We're not even sure if the old Lancelot was set up or not."

Harry eyed him and was struck anew by the fact that six months had passed. It was six months' worth of events he'd missed, troubles and concern he wasn't aware of, problems he neither had nor could try to help anyone solve. And in those six months, all those issues had been Eggsy's problem – and he'd gotten used to dealing with them.

Looking away, Harry frowned. He'd lost time before – twice very recently, yes, but before that as well. Yet this re-adjustment was going to be the hardest to make. So much had changed. He'd missed so damn much. He'd missed a whole damn apocalypse and the complete overhaul of the organisation he'd spend most of his life serving.

"Harry," Eggsy said, and Harry turned to him. "You alright?"

"Quite fine," Harry said, and sighed. "I don't suppose I could get leave to visit London?" he asked. "I understand the reason why I can't yet access my gear, but I would very much like some better clothing."

"You're not being held here, Harry – you're free to go anytime you want," Eggsy said, shaking his head. "I'm going back tomorrow – you can ride shot gun if you want. Or I can get you a car right now. Either's fine so as long as you clear it with Merlin first."

Harry considered it. He could go that very day, however… he had a feeling he could probably use an informed guide. From what he had seen online so far, the property damage had been rather minimal considering everything, but still. It was a different world out there. "Tomorrow sounds fine," he said.

Eggsy grinned. "It's a date, then."


End file.
